Courtesy of University of Alberta News
By Brian Murphy

The ability of mussels to cling to just about everything in their underwater world has yielded more important findings for a University of Alberta researcher.

Chemical and materials engineering researcher Hongbo Zeng says academic freedom at the U of A and the university’s encouragement of innovation, sustainability and creativity helped his research team make its important findings.

Two years ago, Zeng discovered that a wet adhesion mechanism that lets mussels attach themselves to even slippery surfaces could lead to development of new products. Those products range from a naturally biodegradable glue for patching up cuts and scrapes on people to an industrial superglue that works in salt water.

Now Zeng and his U of A research team are the first to directly measure the molecular force and energy required for another interaction mechanism that gives mussels their clinging power. Zeng also says the adhering mechanism in mussels, referred to as the Cation-pi interaction, is shared with many other living things—and even non-biological systems as unlikely as Alberta’s oilsands.

Zeng explains how a relatively simple living thing like a mussel shares common chemistry with bitumen, sand and water.

“When the tarsands are heated to separate the oil from sands in water, we now have a better understanding of how and why oil molecules can remain stuck to particles of sand in a complex water environment,” said Hongbo. “Understanding and measuring the mechanism of how and why some sand particles remain stuck to oil molecules could help for a more efficient cleanup of water used in the oilsands production process.”

In biological systems like the human body, Zeng’s nano-level measurement of the bonding process between molecules tells us more about transport of salt into cells, and the effect of nicotine on the brain.

“Nicotine molecules bond to certain brain receptors, and understanding the interaction energy required could lead to developing pharmaceutical methods of preventing the undesirable effect of nicotine on the brain,” said Zeng.

The researchers say a more thorough understanding of these molecular bonding processes could allow for the development of new, faster-acting pharmaceuticals

“Our research could be useful for pharmaceuticals such as cancer drugs,” said Zeng. “Drugs designed to target specific cells could be designed for faster, more lasting bonds with cancer cells, and that would increase the efficiency of the patient’s treatment.”

Zeng’s research paper was published Feb. 28 in the journal Angewandte Chemie. Qingye Lu, a post-doctoral fellow in Zeng’s lab, is the first author of the paper. The publishers were so impressed by the research it was classified as a “hot paper,” a designation the journal’s editors reserve for the most important papers of high current interest in their field.

Courtesy of Penn State News
By Hannah Lane

Laura Davis had dreamed of traveling to Africa for years. So in May 2012, she jumped at the chance to embark on a journey to South Africa and Mozambique offered through a Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences natural resources embedded course.

The trip was a life-changing experience.

“I loved the idea of being able to learn about the natural world around me while traveling,” the senior environmental resource management major said. “This trip not only taught students about the resources of southern Africa, but also allowed us to experience the region for ourselves.”

Davis, of Tunkhannock, Pa., and her fellow students were required to take classes to prepare for the trip. After the semester ended, they spent three weeks in South Africa and Mozambique focusing on natural resources.

The students learned about African development issues, geography, society and culture, as well as the role and use of natural resources on the continent.

In South Africa, the group traveled to a number of national parks, including famous Addo Elephant National Park. They also visited and toured several universities.

“In Mozambique we spent most of our time in the regions surrounding Gorongosa National Park,” Davis said. “I did an independent study in Mozambique at this park.”

She worked with the environmental educator at the park to create lessons for the local communities to promote awareness of issues such as pollution, poaching and sustainable agriculture.

“I was greatly influenced and inspired by my research and experiences in Mozambique,” she said. “I would love to go back and work in Africa in the future.”

For information about the environmental resource management major, visit the website.

Courtesy of Ohio State University

An Ohio State University statistician says that the natural human difficulty with grasping probabilities is preventing Americans from dealing with climate change.

The situation is not hopeless. Instead of taking an extreme all-or-nothing view about climate change, we can think of it as a spectrum of possible problems, and look for a spectrum of practical solutions that will do the most good.  ~ Mark Berliner

In a panel discussion at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting on Feb. 15, Mark Berliner said that an aversion to statistical thinking and probability is a significant reason that we haven’t enacted strategies to deal with climate change right now.

Berliner, professor and chair of statistics at Ohio State, is the former co-chair of the American Statistical Association’s Advisory Committee on Climate Change Policy, and as such, he spent two years talking with U.S. Congressional staffers about climate change.

As a result, he’s come to the conclusion that Americans need to understand that climate change is a range of possible events that are more or less likely. However, the negative impacts of climate change can be reduced by taking some moderate actions today, he said.

“The general public has an understanding of tipping points, the moment beyond which things become inevitable. But as soon as you start thinking of climate change as inevitable, it’s easy to throw up your hands and say, ‘it’s too late, so why bother to do anything?’” Berliner said. “It’s like a two-pack-a-day smoker deciding not to cut back on the cigarettes, because he’s as good as gone.”

“The situation is not hopeless. Instead of taking an extreme all-or-nothing view about climate change, we can think of it as a spectrum of possible problems, and look for a spectrum of practical solutions that will do the most good,” he said.

From his own career in climate research, Berliner sees climate change as a collection of possible events: some extreme disasters that are unlikely to happen, but still possible; and less extreme events that are much more likely.

It’s the difference, he said, between the low possibility that a coastal town will flood permanently, versus the high possibility that high tides and periodic floods will force the town to close its beaches for more days during the year—a loss to valuable tourism.

It’s human nature to abhor uncertainty, he said, and climate research, like all research, is full of uncertainty. He hopes that opinion leaders will help the public understand the nature of science, and the idea that uncertainties diminish as data accumulates. There will never be a single right answer to the question “what will happen to Earth’s climate?”

“One of the criticisms of climate change research is that different computer models give different answers,” Berliner said. “But the key is not to pick the right climate model, but to pick the right elements out of each of the models.”

As he calculates the effectiveness of potential climate change mitigation strategies, Berliner has determined one thing for sure.
 
“Compromise—if it leads to doing something—is better than doing nothing,” he said.

The University of Melbourne and the Lord Mayor of Melbourne today launched Australia’s largest green roof research and outreach project at the University’s Burnley Campus near Richmond.

The Burnley Green Roofs Project will determine the best plant species and soils to use on city roofs, demonstrate how green roofs can use storm water and reduce building energy use and showcase how beautiful and multi-functional green roofs can be.

The project includes a large demonstration roof consisting of 14 different green roof types made up of distinct planting zones, irrigation and growing treatments; a research roof, dedicated to quantifying the environmental benefits of green roofs and plant performance; and a biodiversity roof, comprising a range of habitat features to encourage and sustain local wildlife.

The project was led by Dr Nick Williams and Mr John Rayner from the University of Melbourne, and the roofs designed by multidisciplinary design practice HASSELL to enable small group teaching activities and demonstrate the variety of green roofs available to the building industry.

The research team at the Burnley campus was the first to develop an Australian research green roof in 2008, which, although significantly smaller revealed a 48% reduction in summer energy use.

Dr Williams, from the Melbourne School of Land and Environment said green roofs had a range of environmental benefits that could help adapt Australian cities to climate change, as well as social and economic benefits that could make denser cities more liveable and attractive.

“Cities suffer from the urban heat island effect which makes them up to four degrees warmer than surrounding areas. Green roofs can help overcome this by reflecting the sun’s radiation and providing shade or evaporative cooling as well as dramatically reducing a building’s energy costs, trapping dust and pollutants and dampening noise,” Dr Williams said.

“Green roofs act as a sponge reducing storm water runoff and potential flooding while lowering local temperature through evaporative cooling.”

“We also want to use the biodiversity roof to understand how city roofs can be used to provide habitat and act as ‘stepping stones’ to link fragmented urban wildlife habitat. This roof includes local native plants, an intermittent stream and hollow logs for habitat.”

Despite the many benefits of green roofs, and their popularity overseas, they are not common in Australia.

Lord Mayor Robert Doyle said “We know that roof tops make up 17 per cent of the total land area in the city. Green roofs are a tremendous opportunity to achieve savings for building owners and create attractive, usable spaces for tenants and residents. It is clear to me that successful greener cities in the future will be the ones that adapt quickly to what people want. And today people want to live in the city because it offers opportunities but they also want openspaces, parks and a clean environment.”

Mr Rayner from the Melbourne School of Land and Environment said the aim of the Burnley Green Roofs Project was to illustrate what is possible, from non-irrigated succulent beds to deeper, productive vegetable gardens.

“Green roofs are functional and beautiful spaces that can be built new or retrofitted to existing buildings. Planning and design are key components to successful green roofs and the Burnley Green Roofs are an example of this,” he said.

“We wanted to display a range of plants that can be successfully grown, but many need a certain depth of growing medium. Given we can’t use a heavy soil on a roof we developed lightweight growing media, together with foam building blocks to create raised beds.

“We also wanted to maximize the plants and vegetation on the roof while maintaining access, so there are shallow planted areas beneath grated metal walkways.”

The design team from HASSELL helped provide inventive design solutions to assemble the roofs.

Many elements of the roof were pre-fabricated and test assembled off-site, then transported and reassembled on the rooftop – this represents an innovation in design, research and construction process, said Mr Stephen Tan from HASSELL.

Ongoing research and the design lessons from the Burnley Green Roofs will now be used to provide technical knowledge for architects, landscape designers and public policy makers to install green roofs in Australian cities.

This inspiring interpretation of Carl Sagan’s iconic “Pale Blue Dot” speech was created as a Sheridan College final thesis project by illustration major Adam Winnik.

I have always thought of Carl Sagan’s writings as “scientific poetry” since they lack the cold touch that science is often cursed for having. I think Sagan’s words resonate more than ever, and will continue with each generation until the human species “wakes up”. The first time I heard this excerpt from his book “Pale Blue Dot” it literally changed my life, and I hope it does for you too. Enjoy.   
~ Adam Winnik

Written and Narrated: Carl Sagan
Music: Hans Zimmer “You’re So Cool”
Art and Animation: Adam Winnik

Courtesy of UBC

University of British Columbia researchers have found that when the animals at the top of the food chain are removed, freshwater ecosystems emit a lot more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

“Predators are disappearing from our ecosystems at alarming rates because of hunting and fishing pressure and because of human induced changes to their habitats,” says Trisha Atwood, a PhD candidate in the Department of Forest and Conservation Sciences in the Faculty of Forestry at UBC.

For their study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, Atwood and her colleagues wanted to measure the role predators play in regulating carbon emissions to better understand the consequences of losing these animals.

Predators are bigger animals at the top of the food chain and their diets are comprised of all the smaller animals and plants in the ecosystem, either directly or indirectly. As a result, the number of predators in an ecosystem regulates the numbers of all the plants and animals lower in the food chain. It’s these smaller animals and plants that play a big role in sequestering or emitting carbon.

When Atwood and her colleagues removed all the predators from three controlled freshwater ecosystems, 93 per cent more carbon dioxide was released into the atmosphere.

“People play a big role in predator decline and our study shows that this has significant, global implications for climate change and greenhouse gases,” says Atwood.

“We knew that predators shaped ecosystems by affecting the abundance of other plants and animals but now we know that their impact extends all the way down to the biogeochemical level.”

Courtesy of  The University of Alberta

A University of Alberta polar bear researcher and 11 international co-authors are urging governments to start planning for rapid Arctic ecosystem change to deal with a climate change catastrophe for the animals.

U of A professor Andrew Derocher co-wrote a policy perspective urging governments with polar bear populations to accept that just one unexpected jump in Arctic warming trends could send some polar bear populations into a precipitous decline.

“It’s a fact that early sea ice breakup, late ice freeze-up and the overall reduction in ice pack are taking their toll,” said Derocher. “We want governments to be ready with conservation and management plans for polar bears when a worst-case climate change scenario happens.”

The effects of climate change on polar bears are clear from both observational and modelling studies in many areas where the bears are found. Earlier studies by Derocher and his colleagues show that one very bad ice year could leave hundreds of Hudson Bay polar bears stranded on land for an extended period. “Such an event could erase half of a population in a single year,” Derocher noted.

“The management options for northern communities like Churchill would range from doing nothing, to feeding the bears, moving them somewhere else or euthanizing them,” said Derocher.

The concerned researchers say they’re not telling governments what to do. But they want policy makers and wildlife managers to start planning for both the predicted escalation of Arctic warming and for an off-the-charts, worst-case scenario.

“You’re going to make better decisions if you have time to think about it in advance; it’s a no-brainer,” said Derocher, adding that “consultation with northern residents takes time and the worst time to ask for input is during a crisis.”

The researchers say the options for polar bear management include what Derocher calls a “wild bear park model”—feeding and releasing the bears when freeze-ups allow the animals to get to their hunting grounds. But the paper reports that the cost could run into the millions and could have ramifications for the animals’ long-term behaviour.

The authors of the paper say governments should be aware of the fallout from climate change, and human safety in the North is going to be an increasing challenge.

“Around the world, polar bears are an iconic symbol, so any tragedy would produce massive attention,” said Derocher. “If the warming trend around Hudson Bay took an upward spike, the population of 900 to 1,000 bears in western Hudson Bay would be on the line, so there has to be a plan.”

The paper, titled “Rapid ecosystem change and polar bear conservation,” was published online as an accepted article Jan. 25 in the journal Conservation Letters.

Courtesy of UBC - By Salina Marshall

Katie O’Callaghan never imagined that her graduate studies in community and regional planning would involve police car chases.

UBC School of Community and Regional Planning student Katie O’Callaghan is a UBC-City of Vancouver Greenest City Scholar. Photo: Martin Dee

“It was exciting,” she says of riding in a squad car alongside officers. But the University of British Columbia student wasn’t in it for the action. Rather, she was interested in when police officers idled their vehicles.

O’Callaghan is a UBC Greenest City Scholar. This innovative summer internship program sponsors 10 UBC graduate students to work on sustainability projects with the City of Vancouver. The students are partnered with a city team and a mentor to investigate and implement projects identified under Vancouver’s Greenest City 2020 Action Plan. The plan identifies 10 long-term goals, supported by a set of measurable and attainable targets, for Vancouver to become the greenest city in the world by 2020.

In cooperation with the Vancouver Police Department, O’Callaghan studied the car-idling behaviour of VPD patrol officers. A previous study had shown that each patrol officer generates approximately 3.95 metric tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions. The VPD aims to reduce the emissions and their impacts, as well as the fuel costs.

When O’Callaghan started her internship last April, the VPD was piloting the use of anti-idle technology for fleet vehicles, but they wanted to assess officers’ behaviour as well. A team of volunteers led by O’Callaghan rode along with VPD officers on 16 shifts to observe their attitudes toward idling. The goal: to find out under what circumstances officers leave their engines running and for how long.

“The VPD is pretty progressive in their sense of sustainability,” O’Callaghan says. But while the officers are concerned about the environment, their first priority is safety.

For example, she discovered police officers prefer idling in dodgy areas, where a quick response time may be required. “Their cars are like a mobile office,” she explains. “They need to idle to defog their windows and power their computers.”

Her study found that officers most often idle for less than five minutes. In those cases, more education about idling could help reduce emissions. For example, many of the officers overestimated the time they needed to charge their computers through idling. “There’s a lot you can do with an awareness campaign,” O’Callaghan says.

“Her study was very interesting,” says Rob Rothwell, fleet manager of the VPD. “It very clearly showed that there is an opportunity to manage idling from both a technological perspective and also through a cultural shift within the organization.” Along with rolling out the new technology, the VPD is planning an educational video to trigger more awareness. “I’m quite confident that over the next year or two we’ll see a significant reduction in idle time.”

O’Callaghan speaks highly of the Greenest City Scholar program. “It shows that UBC students are engaging in the community,” she says, pleased with the opportunity to connect sustainability research with practical solutions. “It was one of the best experiences of my life.”

Applications are now being received for the 2013 Greenest City Scholars Program until February 27.

Courtesy of ASU News

Scientists at ASU are celebrating their recent success on the path to understanding what makes the fiber that spiders spin – weight for weight – at least five times as strong as piano wire. They have found a way to obtain a wide variety of elastic properties of the silk of several intact spiders’ webs using a sophisticated but non-invasive laser light scattering technique.

“Spider silk has a unique combination of mechanical strength and elasticity that make it one of the toughest materials we know,” said Jeffery Yarger, a professor in ASU’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and lead researcher of the study. “This work represents the most complete understanding we have of the underlying mechanical properties of spider silks.”

Spider silk is an exceptional biological polymer, related to collagen (the stuff of skin and bones) but much more complex in its structure. The ASU team of chemists is studying its molecular structure in an effort to produce materials ranging from bulletproof vests to artificial tendons.

Female Nephila clavipes on her web. The web was characterized using Brillouin spectroscopy to directly and non-invasively determine the mechanical properties. Photo by: Jeffery Yarger

The extensive array of elastic and mechanical properties of spider silks in situ, obtained by the ASU team, is the first of its kind and will greatly facilitate future modeling efforts aimed at understanding the interplay of the mechanical properties and the molecular structure of silk used to produce spider webs.

The team recently published their results in the online issue of Nature Materials and their paper is titled “Non-invasive determination of the complete elastic moduli of spider silks.”

“This information should help provide a blueprint for structural engineering of an abundant array of bio-inspired materials, such as precise materials engineering of synthetic fibers to create stronger, stretchier and more elastic materials,” explained Yarger.

Other members of Yarger’s team, in ASU’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, included Kristie Koski, at the time a postdoctoral researcher and currently a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, and ASU undergraduate students Paul Akhenblit and Keri McKiernan.

The Brillouin light scattering technique used an extremely low power laser, less than 3.5 milliwatts, which is significantly less than the average laser pointer. Recording what happened to this laser beam as it passed through the intact spider webs enabled the researchers to spatially map the elastic stiffnesses of each web without deforming or disrupting it. This non-invasive, non-contact measurement produced findings showing variations among discrete fibers, junctions and glue spots.

Four different types of spider webs were studied. They included Nephila clavipes (pictured), A. aurantia (“gilded silver face”-common to the contiguous United States), L. Hesperus, the western black widow and P. viridans, the green lynx spider, the only spider included that does not build a web for catching prey but has major silk elastic properties similar to those of the other species studied.

The group also investigated one of the most studied aspects of orb-weaving dragline spider silk, namely supercontraction, a property unique to silk. Spider silk takes up water when exposed to high humidity. Absorbed water leads to shrinkage in an unrestrained fiber up to 50 percent shrinkage with 100 percent humidity in N. clavipes silk.

Their results are consistent with the hypothesis that supercontraction helps the spider tailor the properties of the silk during spinning. This type of behavior, specifically adjusting mechanical properties by simply adjusting water content, is inspirational from a bio-inspired mechanical structure perspective.

“This study is unique in that we can extract all the elastic properties of spider silk that cannot and have not been measured with conventional testing,” concluded Yarger.

The Department of Defense and the National Science Foundation supported this research.

Courtesy of ASU News

Faculty and students in ASU’s School of Earth and Space Exploration are collaborating with artists of an upcoming exhibition centered on the issue of limited earth materials, specifically copper, on view Feb. 8 through May 11 at the ASU Art Museum.

The exhibition, titled “Cu29: Mining for You,” will explore the process of staking a claim, the idea of owning the Earth’s natural resources, and our dependence on copper for everything from saucepans to cellphones.

The artists and the exhibition curator, Heather Sealy Lineberry, have collaborated with geologist Steve Semken, a professor in ASU’s School of Earth and Space Exploration (SESE), in building their ideas for the exhibition and programs. He specifically advised them on geology, as well as the issues of place and culture related to mining, copper mining in Arizona, and a clearer understanding of how earth materials are limited.

“Geologic processes have richly endowed the state of Arizona with copper deposits,” says Semken. “Copper has been central to the modern history and economic development of our state. Geology is key to the understanding of how and where copper deposits formed in Arizona, and how copper can be mined most economically and with the least possible impact on the environment.”

Semken was interviewed, along with SESE professor Donald Burt, an economic geologist who regularly teaches ore geology and resources courses, for a sound piece that will play continuously in the gallery. The collaged voices will include other scientists, chefs, musicians, sculptors, miners, climbers, electricians and others who use copper in their professions and lives.

The resulting exhibition traces the extraction of copper from the ground to its use by artists in their studios, electricians and plumbers in houses, and chefs in their kitchens. It contains a series of installations, some of which are formed by community participation, pointing toward the pervasiveness of copper in our lives – and our bodies – and our dependence upon it. Art objects from the ASU Art Museum’s collection will be displayed alongside copper scrap waiting to be recycled, raising further issues of use and value.

Geology students are contributing research on the limited elements and copper. Their work is focused on school programs as the exhibition addresses the State standards in science, Arizona history and art. The students will collaborate with ASU Art Museum student docents to lead the tours of the exhibition. Two SESE undergraduate majors – Salimeh Hobeheidar and Reed Seamons – received training and will be student docents for the exhibition.

“My role is to lead groups of people on a tour of the exhibit, talking with them about how copper impacts our lives and how the resource is becoming limited,” explains Hobeheidar, a junior majoring in earth and space science education. “My education degree is helping me a lot with this project. Since I did my project in professor Semken’s ‘Earth Science in Arizona and the Southwest’ class about copper being used in art, I can understand where the artists are coming from, and I am able to help explain what it is and what other minerals are, and how they impact our state and in general our society.”

Hobeheidar’s project from Semken’s class, a beautiful necklace of copper and copper minerals that she created, will also be on display in the exhibition.

Through projects like Cu29, faculty and students of SESE are able to share specialized geological knowledge with an audience that might not otherwise be exposed to science.

“The artists – Clare Patey and Mathew Moore – have long histories exploring through art events and installations what we need to live in cities, whether food or basic materials, whether London or Phoenix,” Lineberry says. “Working with Steve Semken and the students at ASU has inspired the artists to create this new, collaborative body of work so tied to our place, its history and future. They encourage us to look more closely at what we do, how we live and what is important.”

More details on the exhibit.